A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Easy Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

I'm a firm believer in Ecclesiastes' saying "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.."  It's true for everything in life, including the sometime mundane things in life like cooking.  I love spending hours in the kitchen making long, complicated recipes....when I'm in the mood. But there are just as many days when I just want to put dinner on the table without a fuss or other days when I crave something cheesy, comforty, and gooey and uncomplicated.  Today was a comfort food day: all the taste of Chicken Cordon Bleu in a velvety sauce, without all the fuss.

I've made a couple of cordon bleu casserole recipes and the idea is pretty simple, very genius, really.  Instead of taking all the time and effort to pound out chicken breasts, fill them, roll them up, bread them, sauté' them, and then bake them....you layer those same ingredients in a casserole dish and serve it up.  Definitely not as elegant and pretty, but it's the same yummy eats in a fraction of the time. Some recipes go to the trouble to bread and pre-cook the chicken bits, some don't. Some heavily spice, some don't.  My recipe is different in one crucial way: the sauce.  Most Cordon Bleu Casseroles are put together with cream of chicken soup.  Mine uses alfredo sauce to pull those simple, easy layers together. 

Gene, the hubs, is my best taster.  He's always honest even if it's not what I want to hear.  Tonight, he thanked me at least three times.  He'd been in the mood for something cheesy, gooey, comforty too.

Chicken Parmigiana

 Chicken Parmigiana is one of those dishes that, to me, always sounds much more difficult than it is to make.  Variations also make it a versatile recipe.  If, instead of chicken breasts, you use whole pieces of chicken with the bones, it becomes the downhome, cozy "chicken spaghetti".  On the flip side, if it's served with the pasta plain, sauce poured over, and chicken breasts lined up domino fashion on top of a serving platter, it becomes an elegant copycat restaurant entree for company. But mostly, we like it simply because it tastes good and is fairly quick and easy to prepare, requiring little more to accompany it than some nice bread and a good salad. 

Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde Sour Cream Sauce

Enchiladas are yummy any time of the year but I seem to really crave them in the winter as creamy, hearty eats on long, cold winter days.  I also love that they can be made ahead and baked later or even frozen and reheated later.  Double batch anyone?  Makes a quick dinner later, some night when I don't have time to cook but I don't want to run through a drive through.

Even though this recipe takes an extra ten minutes to make the sauce from scratch, it's so much tastier than using a "cream of" soup, and the white sauce is super easy to make--worth it!

Potluck Creamy Mac & Cheese (from scratch and for a crowd)

 
 

 There are basically two ways to make from scratch Mac & Cheese, that I know of, at least.  The easiest is the oldest style, the way my Nannie (Grandmother) made it which was pasta, cheese, and milk.  The end.  Fabulous!  Truly. (Recipe for Purist Mac & Cheese)

The second way, which most people are more familiar with is  by making a cheese sauce by way of a traditional white sauce and it is also fabulous.  To me, the recipes aren't in competition, I just pick the dish that  best meets my needs.

When I'm at home cooking for just us I tend to use the first method because I have a little more control over the circumstances and can dig into it hot out of the oven. When I'm looking at a potluck situation, like I am tonight, prepping pasta for my church women's auxiliary's turn to provide dinner at the Ronald McDonald House, I go with the white/cheese sauce version which preps a day or two ahead, and can be forgotten until it's time to re-heat it in the oven just prior to serving and gets even better as leftovers. 

Not that the pasta/cheese/milk version doesn't make for great leftovers....if there ever were any, I mean.

I do have one little trick up my sleeve that I've never seen in other recipes and that is adding a little chicken soup base to the sauce for an extra kick.  The same could be done by cooking the pasta in chicken broth but pouring out all that broth out after the pasta cooks hurts my little chicken broth-loving heart too much so I simply stir in a little soup base or comparable bouillon paste.  I use any of these four labels:  L.B. Jameson's Chicken Soup Base, Tone's Chicken Base, Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base, or McCormick Chicken Base. 

This recipe also works wonderfully for freezer meals.  Just make and divide into two or three freezer containers depending on the size that works best for your needs.  Even better, add chopped cooked chicken and frozen peas, and you have easy dinners ready to bake.  Also, the recipe can also be easily cut in half. 

Mexican Villa at Home

Nothing like a huge pan of Mexican Villa fake out Burrito Enchilada Styles and cold winter's night...while praying for spring.

Click for recipe and updated step by step photos:  Mexican Villa Fake Out.

Greek Salad with Easy Homemade Greek Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

In keeping with James' birthday dinner of Ina Garten's Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna) and Greek Do Nothing Pineapple Coconut Cake, I made a large Greek Dinner Salad with Easy Homemade Greek Vinaigrette to go with the pasta at dinner.

Quick and easy, it's a matter of chopping a few fresh vegetables from the crisper, tossing over some creamy feta, and whisking together a few clean-eating pantry ingredients to dress the salad just before serving--and not having to dig through the fridge for clunky, who-knows-how-old bottled dressings!  

 

Ina Garten's Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna)

Greek Do Nothing Pineapple Coconut Cake

Crock-pot/Slow Cooker Kielbasa Casserole

 

 What's better than a hot bowl of comfort on a cooooooooold winter day?  A hot bowl of comfort that's as good for you as it tastes!  Can it get any better than those two things?  It can when it's a quick layer into the crockpot, flip the switch, and getting to go one of the other million things on my to-do list until it's time to grab a bowl, a spoon, and our appetites.

Pinterest Recipe: One Pot Chili Mac and Cheese

 

 You know how you, okay: me, pin a million recipes on Pinterest that look good or proclaim to be "the best ________ ever!" and you, okay: me, either never get around to trying them out or I do try them and they are lackluster at best? 

This one (photo to left) works--it's a keeper! 

It's called chili mac but, to be honest, it's what we called, when I was growing up, Mom's goulash.  The differences are the cheese, the beans, the chili powder, and the best of all: ONE POT!  I know, right? That last part made my little heart skip a beat.  ONE POT.  No cooking the pasta separately and the skillet to brown the ground beef, etc.  Just brown, drain, dump in cans from the pantry, pasta that tastes even better from having cooked in the sauce, and it's a done deal.  To most people, that's called a weeknight dinner win-win.  To me, as a 12-hour nightshifter with a non-traditional work schedule, it's work night or sleep day win-win.

To get the recipe, click below: 

One Pot Chili Mac and Cheese from Damn Delicious blog

Nutrition per 1/8th recipe:  Calories:   153;  Protein:  12;  Carbs:   13;  Fat:   6;  Fiber 1;

Cook's notes:

I did make a few changes, no reflection on the original recipe, I just had to work around what I had in my pantry and fridge.  I used double the amount of meat (hubs is a big meat eater) half of it ground beef and half ground sausage.  I used large shell pasta instead of macaroni simply because that's what I had, I doubled the amount of cheese, used kidney beans only, and used shredded "Mexican" cheddar/monterey jack mix, again, because that's what I had on hand. 

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Ina Garten's Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna)

It's March which means the "madness" in our family is always the family game we play called "What does James want for dinner for his birthday?"

Since I was a child, the tradition in our family was always that the birthday boy or girl got to choose their birthday menu, anything under the sun they wanted. As a kid, I always wanted my Mom's Chicken Chow Mein and my Nannie's (grandmother) Banana Bread. 

As adults, we've created a slight twist on the tradition with my cousin James where he tries (not very hard, LOL) to "stump" Auntie Miranda and I with his menu choices.  I usually make the dinner and Auntie does his cake from a clue or direction rather than a specific dish.  Last year he said "European peasant food" and since we're Swedish/Norwegian I went to from scratch Swedish Meatballs with cranberry sauce and Jansson's Temptation, while his direction to Auntie was "checkerboard cake" from which she created an incredible Cherry/Vanilla checkerboard cake. Yum!

This year we were told "Greek"  and "Pineapple Upside Down Cake".  Since I had to work the night before, Auntie very kindly created both the cake and the entree:  Pastitsio and Greek Pineapple/Coconut cake.  Holy Crap, she "did good!", as we told her last night.  Today I have Pastitsio recipe and tomorrow will upload the cake recipe and link back.  These are great recipes for anytime but, definitely, any birthday boy or girl would give you tons of hugs and kisses for making these!

 

Jansson's Frestelese aka Jansson's Temptation: Swedish Scalloped Potatoes

 Another Swedish dish from James's Birthday menu, these are one of the two best scalloped potato dishes I've ever eaten or made, the other being Cook's Illustrated Scalloped Potatoes with Thyme and Bay. What sets both of these dishes apart from the rest is the amped up seasoning. In the latter it's the thyme and bay, and in the former it's sardines.  Yes, you read that right: sardines. But before you turn your mind off, like I almost did when I read the recipe, let me say that I didn't tell my guests what was in the potatoes until after everyone had already eaten quite a bit and said they'd loved the dish.  It's just a psychological thing, sort of like when I introduced the hubs to sushi. I ordered several rolls, had him eat without knowing what he was eating, and to his surprise, his favorite things were the raw tuna roll and the eel sauce...on anything.

But if you're still a little nervous, like I admit I was when I first made the dish too, only use half a tin of sardines and smoosh them up a bit so they're evenly spread through the layers without any one big bite of them in a lump.  But do try this.  Like the hubs and his sushi, you might surprise yourself.